GMES&Africa is a user-driver project to support the public policy maker’s need for global access to reliable, accurate and up-to-date information on issues of environment and security.
In order to develop operational services that best meet users' needs and are adapted to the national context, it is essential to identify these thematic needs in advance, to translate them into technical descriptions of services, while capitalizing on the experience and feedback from completed/ongoing projects in relation with the three GMES services.
OSS and their partners have agreed on conducting national studies in six countries (Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia), aiming at gathering and analysing the needs expressed by end users; establishing the diagnosis of the existing in terms of ongoing projects and actions in relation to the three GMES services as well as the definition of the technical specifications required for the services development (pilot area, scale, …)
Understand the end-users demand in Libya before developing the services:
Libyan Centre for Remote Sensing and Space Sciences (LCRSSS) has initiated the reflexion on identifying the end-users in Libya and define their needs, in order to ensure the services uptake while maintaining a cost-effective transformation of data into to information of added value through the appropriate service delivery methods.
The first national workshop was held on 8 and 9 April in Tunis. Twelve participants, representing the beneficiary institutions, took part, despite the critical security situation currently prevailing in Tripoli.
During this workshop, LCRSSS presented and discussed the preliminary results of the series of surveys and technical meeting with the end-users from different technical department of water, agriculture and environment institutions, in consultation with the various stakeholders at the Libyan level.
Bridging the services to end-users:
OSS and LCRSSS took advantage of this workshop to initiate the discussion of the transformation of the end-user needs into operational services and harmonize the vision on service delivery and packaging methods as well as the ancillary data exchange.